Laser-sticker contacts could let you shoot beams from your eyes

SUPER-thin laser stickers may one day secure banknotes or even let you beam lasers out of your eyes.

Malte Gather at the University of St Andrews, UK, and his colleagues made 200-nanometre-thick flexible membranes that produce laser beams when light shines on them. They can work both suspended in the air and when they are stuck to objects.

Changing the laser’s properties can turn each one into a unique security tag. Gather says the team stuck one to a banknote over a year ago and it still gives the same spectral signatures and security code that it gave when they first applied it. …

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